Good morning, everybody. You're all very welcome to Beloit, Wisconsin, to our Global Technology and Innovation Center. As some of us discussed last night, it is the nation's capital for food and beverage innovation. Some would even argue it's the global worldwide capital for food and beverage innovation, but we'll let you all decide that by the end of the day. What are you going to see today? Firstly, you're gonna see that we're in a fantastic sector with plenty of growth opportunities in front of us. You're going to see that the food and beverage market is dynamic, and you're gonna see all the work that's going on behind the scenes. You're gonna see where the consumer is going and how well-placed we are to enable our customers to actually meet the needs of those consumers.
You're gonna see that we've made the right strategic choices, that our portfolio is in great shape, and that we're perfectly positioned for market outperformance. You can see here in the chart my five key takeaways for today. Firstly, the Americas. The Americas is a fantastic region for Kerry. When I was based here 20 years ago, this market, this region was dynamic. It is even more dynamic today. This region has always delivered for us at Kerry. It's delivering in the zone of 20% EBITDA margin for us, with plenty of upside potential to that. It is thanks to our technology portfolio, our applications expertise, our market insights, and of course, the skills and capability of our people that we feel confident about being able to help our customers to meet the needs of any consumer in this region.
The next point is food service, where we believe we have a structural tailwind. We have consistently done well in the food service channel. It is a channel that we feel even more confident about out into the future. We're going to bring to life for you today how we've been doing it and why we're so confident going out into the future. Next is emerging markets. We have a significant presence in emerging markets, we're gonna show you how we've been winning through our local approach and through our local teams. Next is the penetration growth opportunities. This is something that is really important for us today and something that we really want to shine a light on for you today.
We're gonna size the renovation opportunity for you and show you why we believe we're well-positioned to take advantage of that renovation opportunity. Lastly, our technology portfolio evolution. We've evolved our technology portfolio significantly in recent years. We've one of the broadest technology portfolios as it relates to the food and beverage market, but more importantly than that, it is the most relevant portfolio for the food and beverage market. On top of that, it is our ability to layer, combine, and bind technologies to create incremental benefits for our customers and to create more impactful solutions for our customers that we're most proud of. Our vision at Kerry is to be our customers' most valued partner, creating a world of sustainable nutrition. What does this mean?
It's about partnering with our customers to help them to meet the needs of their consumers, regardless of where their consumers are and regardless of what those needs are. You can see here from the middle of the chart just the scale of resources that we have within this organization. On the right-hand side of the page, you can see our three key growth differentiators. I've touched on food service and emerging markets already. What is sustainable nutrition? Sustainable nutrition is about four things. It's about partnering with customers to improve the nutritional profile of their products. It's about helping them to improve the taste of their products, minimizing the environmental impact, and providing value to that customer. It's these four things combined. Sustainable nutrition is what energizes us at Kerry. It's what motivates us at Kerry. We're the leader in integrated solutions.
That's about combining, binding, synthesizing, layering technology to create incremental benefit for our customers above and beyond when they use single independent technologies. That is what integrated solutions is all about. You can see from the chart here that we've a well-balanced, diversified global business, whether you look at it through the lens of geography, end-use market, customer segment, channel, or through the lens of developed or emerging markets. What is also important is our ability at Kerry to be able to pivot resources at pace and at scale to wherever the growth opportunity actually is. We've sized the specialty ingredients and flavors market at about EUR 85 billion. This market has grown, is growing, and will continue to grow out into the future based on 2 key dynamics. Firstly, macro dynamics. Growing world population, rising global incomes, rise in the middle class, urbanization.
The second set of dynamics are the consumer dynamics. The consumer is going in this direction globally. This is not just a developed market phenomenon. This is a global phenomenon. Health and well-being, natural trusted ingredients, local taste, sustainability, and of course, convenience. Consumers will compromise on anything except convenience. I guess what we want to talk to you about today and really shine a light on is the market penetration opportunity, the renovation opportunity. We've sized this opportunity at about EUR 15 billion, and it's about working with our customers to improve the nutritional profiles of their products, cleaning up labels, helping them to meet their sustainability goals, and helping them with cost reduction solutions. Here are some examples of that penetration opportunity. We've sized sodium reduction and sugar reduction at about EUR 6 billion.
Firstly, on sodium reduction, there's an opportunity to reduce sodium in meat, meals, and snacks categories by about 30% to reach WHO guidelines. The reality of it is that customers have set targets much farther than the WHO guidelines over the next 5 to 10 years. We have the reputation in the industry. We're recognized for our capability to layer technology, to help those customers to meet those objectives, not just the 30% reduction, but actually much farther than that. The sugar reduction opportunity, when we look at the carbonated soft drinks market over the course of the last 3 or 4 years, it's grown about 1% CAGR, just over 1%. The low or no sugar category has grown maybe about 5 times that. This is changing.
What's actually happening here now is there's a shift away from high-intensity sweeteners, from synthetic sweeteners, more towards natural ways of sweetening these products. That is right in the wheelhouse of what our capability is, thanks to our capabilities and our technology and our Tastesense sweetness portfolio. Next is on sustainability. Many of our customers, the majority of our customers, have sustainability targets out in front of them, be that to 2025, 2030, 2040, or 2050. Thanks to our ability and thanks to the capability of our teams, thanks to the portfolio that we have, we're well-positioned to help our customers progress and make progress towards those objectives and those targets. We've seen a 20% increase in sustainability product innovations actually here in the U.S. in the last three years.
The penetration opportunity as it relates to reducing cost and complexity. I talked about this many times in the past as it relates to the food service channel, about bringing solutions to customers to help them to simplify their back-of-house operations and take cost out or manage costs. The same opportunity is there on the retail side, helping customers on the retail side of our business on CPGs to take cost out of their end-to-end supply chains. Food waste reduction, for example, is an example. You're gonna see examples of these penetration opportunities right throughout the course of the day in the breakout sessions. These are the brilliant breakout sessions we have planned for you today, food service, taste, emerging markets, and biotechnology solutions. Firstly, food service.
We've a strong track record here, a strong history here. This business has grown from EUR 150 million in 2000 to over EUR 2 billion in 2023. From 2017 to 2023, we've grown this channel at about 5% CAGR, about 3% ahead of the underlying market. Why is food service a structural tailwind for us? This market is massive, and we feel we're still under-penetrated. 50,000 new restaurant openings on average in the U.S. per annum. 20 LTOs launched on average per food service outlet and an increasing out-of-home consumption occasions. What this means is that operators, chains, are fighting for consumers' attention from morning till night. This provides a tremendous opportunity for us to help those customers to bring innovation to their menu to entice those consumers in the door.
We've seen a 52% increase in LTOs since 2019. Of course, that penetration opportunity as it relates to reducing cost and complexity to the back of the store, this is only snowballing for us. We've seen an increase in the number of engagements around nutritional enhancements right across the menu. All of this is leading to an increased market outperformance and gives us confidence to say that while in the past we were outperforming this market by 3%, we feel confident that we can outperform this market by 4% or 4% plus. How have we been doing this?
It's a combination of three factors, firstly, the breadth and depth of our technology portfolio, secondly, our business model and our dedicated food service experts that are solely dedicated to this channel, and of course, our deeply embedded innovation partnerships with our customers. Next is on to taste. We're a global leader in taste as it relates to scale or technology capability. What I wanna really focus on today, and what we want to bring to life for you today, is what really differentiates Kerry in taste. We've a leading authentic taste portfolio where we're vertically integrated across savory, dairy, citrus, botanicals, fermentation, and modulation. Really important, that vertical integration. Super important to our customers. Our farm food capability.
We've always been natural at Kerry, and that gives us an advantage when it comes to crafting taste experiences for clean label, health and wellness, authenticity, and sustainability. Our pioneering innovation, using proprietary fermentation and modulation tools to help customers to meet and exceed their most complex taste challenges. Next is emerging markets. Again, we've a strong track record here, growing 8% CAGR from 2017 to 2023. We've a very significant presence, a very well-invested infrastructure right across emerging markets. Our portfolio is actually quite balanced across the emerging markets when we look at it geographically and look at it through the lens of Asia-Pacific, Middle East, Africa, and the LATAM region.
We're gonna focus on the LATAM region today, I think you're gonna be really interested on how the team is helping customers navigate through quite a complex, changing regulatory environment and how they're winning through the combination of taste and nutrition, by combining taste and nutrition. Finally, on to biotechnology, why have we invested in biotechnology? When we look out into the future, we see challenges ahead for the food and beverage industry, not least feeding a growing population with finite natural resources. Also doing this in a sustainable way. Also doing it where there is resilience right across the end-to-end supply chain. Doing it in such a way that meets consumer demands and consumer requirements for clean label, for natural, for better-for-you type products. Doing all that and doing it in a cost-effective way.
This is a pretty significant challenge. We believe that biotechnology can help to solve some of these challenges. We have purposefully and strategically invested in our biotechnology capability over the last 5-10 years, to the point that we have a EUR 1.3 billion business today. Just to share with you some of the examples of some new products we've brought to the market. We've developed a new clean label preservation system through fermentation. A clean label emulsification system that we have developed through the combination of fermentation and enzyme modification. We developed a new enzyme to reduce acrylamide in coffee that we're going to see in the breakout session. We developed new peptides through yeast fermentation as a key building block into taste modulation for our sodium reduction opportunities. These are just a few.
We believe we can do more. That's why we're announcing a EUR 15 million investment to build out our global biotechnology hub in Leipzig in Germany. We believe we're best positioned to leverage the power of biotechnology into food and beverage applications. We believe this because of our scale, because of our innovation platform, and because of our world-class food and beverage applications expertise. I'm now going to hand you over to Albert, our Chief Science and Technology Officer. Albert is going to lead out the biotechnology session later on. For now, he's going to talk to you about how we think about science, technology, and innovation at Kerry. Thank you.
Good morning. Welcome to Beloit. I'm gonna talk to you just for a few minutes about our science and technology. Our focus and purpose is solving our customers' challenges with science-backed solutions, and we think this is something that is growing. We think there's gonna be more challenge to our customers as time goes on, linked to what Edmond talked about in regard to nutrition, in regard to carbon, in regard to cost, in regard to taste. We have to think about how consumers consume food, how it can be done in a way that food products are more nutritious, but taste as good if not better in the future.
We have to think about how food is produced, how it can be preserved, and how all this can be done with delivering a better production or better for our planet. This is what we can do. We think we are the partner of choice that can work with our customers and help solve these challenges. Over the last 10 years, we've invested EUR 3 billion in our RD&A ecosystem of people, infrastructure, and enabling systems. We continue to invest EUR 300 million a year, which is one of the leading spends in the food and beverage industry and fully leverages the scale that we've achieved in that industry.
We've over 1,200 scientists working on technology development on solutions to our customers, generating over 1,400 patents and working in a broad ecosystem with startups, suppliers, and universities to deliver science-backed sustainable nutrition solutions to our customers. We look at it, and we've 3 types of innovation that we have in Kerry. I mentioned before the challenges that customers are facing, this is where our application innovation comes into play. These are the teams, you're gonna see many examples of this today, where the teams are using existing technology capability, defining solutions, understanding our customers' challenges, whether that be in formulation, whether that be in supply chain, or whether that be in manufacturing, and designing the right solution for that problem.
This is further complemented by technology innovation, where we optimize and evolve that portfolio to make it more fit for purpose so that our science teams, our application teams can solve customer challenges. Lastly, our science innovation, where we're designing and defining the products of tomorrow. Over the last 10 years, as Edmond's talked about, we have defined a science and technology strategy focused on two key areas, taste and biotechnology. In the taste area, we have a fundamental understanding of taste receptor metabolism and how this can be modified and modulated to deliver solutions around sweet modulation, salt modulation, kokumi, umami, masking, and mouthfeel. You're going to see examples of this today as you go around the session, where our teams are using enzyme-modified products to develop unique building blocks that are going into solutions for our customers.
In the biotechnology area, the focus is enabling technologies in taste, in enzymes, in food preservation and protection, in ProActive Health, and in biopharma technologies. We use and we have a fundamental understanding of all the core sciences, whether this be in bioinformatics on targeted targetomics, as gene and strain engineering, microbial screening, clinical studies, to define the solutions and the technologies of tomorrow. We are investing in science, technology, and capability to and we're fundamentally understanding the science of food, as Edmond talked, but we're a food company. Through that understanding, we are able to design and develop solutions, technologies, building blocks that will impact the nutrition of a product, the sustainability of a product, the taste of a product, and the cost and value we can deliver to our customers.
With that, I'm gonna hand over to Elizabeth and Oliver that'll take you through the Americas session.
Good morning, everyone. Oliver and I are gonna take you through what makes North America unique and really why we're well-positioned to achieve above-market growth. First and foremost, it's because we have a consumer base who loves to experiment. We have the largest economy in the world, and food and beverage is a key contributor. Consumers love new products here. We are a hotbed for creativity, with new products being launched every day. In fact, there's approximately 30,000 new food and beverages launched annually, and there is no sign of that slowing, with even a growth in the last year of 14%. As Edmond mentioned earlier, the industry has responded in a couple of ways, both from innovation and renovation. In fact, two-thirds of that 30,000 is in reformulations or renovations. You might see in the media this means innovation is slowing.
You might see the headlines. In fact, that's just wrong, particularly for those of us in the industry. Those reformulation activities are good news for Kerry for things like clean label optimization, sustainability enhancements, nutritional enhancements, and more. Really, we're well-positioned to capture this. With that, I'm gonna turn you over to Oliver, who's gonna talk to you a little bit about the profile of our business today.
Thanks very much, Elizabeth, good morning, everybody, welcome to Beloit. I hope you're having a great morning so far. Look, I'm here to talk about the North American business, you know, I guess it's a privilege for me every day to get up and work with the rockstar team that you all hear about and you're gonna meet today. Fantastic team as we execute our sustainable nutrition strategy across the region. North America is our largest region. It's EUR 3.1 billion. We have 6,000 fantastic employees, we have 49 manufacturing locations. We've a strong track record and demonstrated a strong track record over a 15-year period of 3% compound annual growth. We've a very well-balanced and diversified business, when you break it down, our food end-use market is about 60% of our business today.
Our beverage business is about 30%, and our pharma business is about 9% or 10%. We further break down food into meat, snacks, dairy, bakery, and meals. From a go-to-market perspective, we further break that down again. Meat, we've got a poultry team, we've got a red meat team, we've an appetizers team. On the snacks side, we've a savory snacks team and a bars and confectionery team. In beverage, it's the same. It's refreshing beverage, it's alcoholic beverage, it's juice manufacturers, water manufacturers, et cetera, et cetera. From a customer segmentation, we would say that 1/3 of our customers are global, and then 2/3 of our customers are local and regional. What do we mean by that? They're large and mid-sized brands, emerging brands, private label players, food service chain operators, and food service independent operators.
From a channel perspective, 2/3 of our business would go through the retail channel, and 1/3 would go through food service channel. You're all there thinking, "Wow, great business in North America, very dynamic. You're covering a lot of end-use market. You're covering every tier and segment of customer. Give me a few more statistics as to why you're gonna be growing in this region above market." Here's a few. 2/3 of our food service business is in segments outperforming the channel: fast casual, QSR, coffee. 2/3 of our snack business is within the better-for-you segment, outperforming the category by 2. non-GMO, reduced sodium, organic, clean label. They're the segments that are growing. 2/3 of our meat business is in poultry, consume twice as much as pork and beef and growing 50% more than pork and beef.
We've also seen a 40% growth in food service LTO wins within our business in the last few years. When you see the breakout group upstairs, you'll understand why. Over the last 2 years, we've won new business with 19 out of the 20 food service chains. We're not happy we didn't get the 20th. We're working on that now. We're reeling that one in as we speak. I talked about private label. We've seen exponential growth in our pipeline with retailers focused on private label, whether it's innovation or renovation. North America's our largest region. I'll leave you with these 4 key points. We're playing in attractive categories and channels. We're winning with customers outperforming their peers. We've a consistent track record, you saw it, over 15 years of winning share and new product innovations.
We've a deep portfolio and applications expertise, which is that we can innovate, renovate, and you're gonna see the capability we have as you go through the breakout groups today.
Welcome back, everybody. I hope you enjoyed this morning's sessions, and especially I hope you enjoyed that gorgeous lunch. I know I certainly did. Before I start, I would really just like to say a very big thank you to the chef team, the beverage team, a special thanks to Chef Hernan, Sam, and Scott. Thank you very much. Really appreciated it. The lunch and today's sessions was all about giving you the first-hand opportunity to really experience the breadth and depth of our technology and the science behind our technology. Also, to give you the opportunity to see the resilience of our business, and most importantly, to see the capability and the expertise of the team.
It is this strong strategic positioning that gives us the confidence that we can deliver on all of our performance ambitions. For the next 10 minutes or so, I'd like to spend some time covering three key messages. Firstly, our strong track record. Secondly, our growth-led balanced model, which is all underpinned by disciplined strategic capital allocation. Briefly, in terms of our long-term track record, since we became a public company in 1986, we've grown our revenues at a 9% CAGR, EBITDA at 12%, adjusted earnings per share at 12%, and uninterrupted double-digit dividend per share over that period. Delivery is a key part of the Kerry story and a key part of our continued commitment going forward. Now to our growth-led balanced model, which is a combination of growth and returns and sustainability.
We aim to drive volume growth, expand our margins while delivering good cash and returns, importantly, also meeting our own sustainability commitments. Taking each of these in turn, firstly starting with volume growth. In Taste and Nutrition, we have a strong record of delivering mid-single-digit volume growth over a long period of time, whether that be a three-year, a five-year, or a ten-year period. You can see the breakdown of our business on the right-hand side of the chart across channels and geography. You'll have heard earlier today our food service leadership. Thomas and the North American team did a fantastic job in bringing to life what drives that leadership position. Firstly, the breadth and depth of our portfolio and our technology. Secondly, the dedicated food service model that we have.
Thirdly, the embedded innovation customer partnerships that we have right across the food service channel. Marcelo and the LATAM team really brought to life the strong track record we have of delivery in the LATAM region, the global capability, and importantly, the local expertise to execute and deliver. These two key strengths are a key driver of why we have the confidence that we can continue to deliver mid-single-digit volume growth in the medium term. Now moving to margin progression and the continued expansion opportunity that we believe we have ahead of us. In 2024, we will deliver good margin progression of circa 100 basis points, moving from 17% to circa 18%.
As we look forward over the next 2 years, we continue to see opportunity through, firstly, operating leverage and product mix and secondly, continued contribution from our Accelerate Operational Excellence programme and cost initiatives to get us into that 19%-20% zone. As you know, we have had significant inflation since 2022, which we've successfully managed through pricing. It has resulted in a mathematical headwind of over 100 basis points. As I've said before, we will require some reversal to get us into that 20%+ range by 2026. Importantly, beyond 2026, we see continued opportunity to further expand our margins, driven by 3 key drivers. Firstly, portfolio mix. I think you'll have seen that come to life through the breakout sessions today, but particularly in our biotechnology solutions breakout session and in our taste sessions.
Secondly, we continue to see opportunity to enhance our margins through leverage. We have invested significantly in both our food service and our emerging markets infrastructure, so we do see good runway on leverage as we look out forward. Finally, continuous improvement and driving efficiencies in the business will continue to be a hallmark of our margin expansion, balanced, of course, with investing for growth over the long term. Now to cash flow and returns. Firstly, on cash. We have made very good progress over the last number of years on cash and have delivered strong cash flow and cash conversion. This has been principally driven by improved working capital, which has been enabled by our Accelerate Operational Excellence programme and also the establishment of our two Global Business Services in KL and in Querétaro.
In 2024, as I mentioned at the H1, we see 2024 as being another good year of cash conversion similar to 2023. Now to returns. Our returns reflect the significant portfolio transformation that we've completed over the last number of years, and you'll have seen the evolution of our portfolio, as I mentioned, in the Biotechnology Solutions breakout session. At the H1, we increased our returns to 10.3%, and we will deliver continued increased returns over the medium term in our target 10%-12% range, driven predominantly by volume growth and continued margin expansion. Now to sustainability and the final element of our balanced model.
You've heard a number of examples today in the various breakout sessions, how we're working with our customers to deliver them solutions to improve the sustainability profile of their products that are consumed by consumers to help them to meet their sustainability targets. We are also committed to meeting our sustainability targets. We've made very good progress in our Beyond the Horizon sustainability commitments and our progress towards 2030. In 2023, we delivered a very strong reduction of 48% in Scope 1 and 2 carbon emissions. We had a good food waste reduction of 39% in 2023. We reached 1.25 billion consumers in 2023, with an overall target of reaching 2 billion consumers by 2030, impacting consumers with our positive and balanced nutrition. Now to capital allocation.
Our capital allocation framework is all about balancing capital reinvestment with capital returns. Our first priority is the continued capital investment in the organic business. We will continue to invest 4%-5% of revenues in the business. Secondly, on dividends, we will maintain our double-digit growth of dividends. Thirdly, on M&A, we will evaluate M&A opportunities that are aligned to our strategy. Finally, we will balance the evaluation of strategic alternatives through M&A or capital investment with the market conditions that prevail in the context of share buybacks. Over the last 12 months, we've returned cash by way of share buybacks of over EUR 500 million. You will see this morning that we announced a further EUR 300 million share buyback program to commence following the completion of our current program.
From our perspective, what is important here is that we continue to maintain a strong and efficient balance sheet while retaining the agility and the flexibility to allocate capital where we believe we can drive the best return, and while also continuing to commit to maintaining a strong investment grade rating. To recap, we have a strong track record. We have a well-proven and well-established growth-led balanced model, which is all underpinned by a disciplined strategic capital allocation. You will have seen today our revenue growth differentiators of food service, emerging markets, and sustainable nutrition. It is the combination of those that gives us the confidence that we will deliver volume growth ahead of our markets, continue to expand our margins while delivering good cash and progressing our returns. With that, I'll hand you back to Edmond to recap today's sessions.
I'm gonna finish where I started this morning. I'm not gonna spend too long up here because I wouldn't do the teams justice, frankly. The, just to go back and look at the takeaways that we had for today. Firstly, the Americas region. I think we all agree that based on what we've seen today, that this is a highly dynamic market. We're winning with the winners, and we're helping others reposition their businesses. Whether it's the global CPGs, regional players, whether it's the emerging brands, whether it's private label, we have the business model to win. Next, on food service.
Strong track record, long history of growth, it's the combination of three key factors: the depth and breadth of our portfolio, the expertise that we have in the channel that's long established and well embedded, and our embedded innovation partnerships that we have with our customers. On emerging markets. Significant scale, very well invested, strong local teams, I thought that Marcel and the team did a fantastic job bringing to life our ability to help customers respond and manage through a very challenging regulatory environment by combining taste with nutrition, by combining nutrition with taste. The penetration growth opportunities and the renovation opportunities are endless, driven by reformulation for nutrition purposes, reformulation or renovation based on cost and based on sustainability.
That opportunity is there both in food service and in retail, and it's something that we really wanted to shine a light on today. We have a powerful technology portfolio across taste, nutrition, and biotechnology. On top of that, it's our ability to combine these technologies, to layer these technologies, to bind them together to create incremental value for our customers over and above single independent technologies. That's our leadership coming to life in terms of integrated technologies or integrated solutions.
Hi there. Dave Hawkins from JPMorgan. Thank you very much for the full day of sessions and breakout sessions. It was super useful to illustrate Kerry's technologies and channels. My question a bit is, you started off a bit at the beginning of the day talking about a EUR 15 billion market opportunity from penetration upside. I was wondering if you could elaborate a little bit on by when we might see this market opportunity and really if you could scope out a bit by categories and by regions. Obviously, qualitatively, we've seen from the sessions today, but any numbers that you can give on the building blocks behind that EUR 15 billion?
My second question is on the margin. You've alluded beyond 2026 to be looking at 20% plus margin. I'm wondering, can you break out a little bit by some of the technologies we've seen today like biotech and taste versus some of the other ingredients? You know, when we do a bit of benchmarking, how are the margins in some of these technologies versus others? I guess overall, therefore, what's the kind of margin opportunity that you could see Kerry getting to in the mid to long run?
Thanks, Ed. I'll kick off here. Firstly, on the EUR 15 billion market, we've looked at it through several angles. Firstly, on sugar, we started by, you know, looking at the total sugar market globally, which is about EUR 40 billion. We took some standard formulations, focusing primarily on beverage. Based on our experience and based on WHO guidelines, you know, if we were to have a 30% reduction in sugar globally, and using our technologies to replace that sugar, you know, what size of the market would that, let's say, provide us out into the future? I mean, that is quite a conservative kind of way of looking at it because in reality, you know, you can take sugar reduction basically effectively to zero.
The, you know, on the snack side, we did the same. We looked at snack, meat, and meals. We looked at on average the total sodium that are in each of these markets, took an average formulation, assumed everything goes just to meet the WHO guidelines, put a, looked at the types of formulations that we have and estimated the size of that market based on that. That EUR 6 billion that we talked about for sugar and salt is a very conservative number. I would say from our capability standpoint, we're confident to sit here, Ed, and say we're the best at the industry on sodium.
I think on the sugar side, it is probably a little bit more competitive. When it comes to masking, we'd be very confident in our ability. That's kind of how we would look at the nutritional reformulation opportunity. The market is now, and the market is evolving, and the market is evolving its, at pace. There's been a lot of discussion around sugar for the last 10-15 years, but the reality, a lot of that was driven by high-intensity sweeteners, stevia to some extent. With products like stevia, you have significant masking or bitterness challenges that require masking.
On the sustainability side and the cost reduction side, again, we took several factors into account, and we, let's say, conservatively estimated the total, let's say, penetration opportunity to be about EUR 15 billion. It is going to continue to evolve. In terms of sustainability, we have customers that have targets out to 2025, 2030, 2040, and 2050. You know, different things are going to happen over time. I think the direction of travel here is pretty set. We are seeing the level of, I guess, regulatory intervention as well, which is going to drive reformulation faster. I would imagine that most of you were not aware of what is happening in LATAM in terms of, let's say, front-of-pack labelling.
That front-of-pack labeling is being introduced in Canada. You know, let's see if and when it's gonna be introduced in the U.S. It is somewhat surprising that it hasn't really moved on in Europe outside of really much outside of the U.K. That we've a sense or we've a belief that reformulation will accelerate and that renovation opportunity will accelerate with further regulation coming into the market because customers are gonna be forced to reformulate over time. I think we took a pretty holistic view of it, a fairly conservative view, and we feel that the underlying kind of macro dynamics and regulatory dynamics are supportive of, you know, let's say, the numbers we put out there this morning. Marguerite, do you-
Maybe I'll just take your question, Ed, on the margins. I think, like I said, we do see an opportunity to drive margins beyond the 20%. There's three component parts, as I called out, in addition to driving the margins through the portfolio mix, and the technology that you would have seen today, particularly in the biotechnology solutions group. The leverage point is also a key point where we have invested heavily in our infrastructure, in our footprint in emerging markets and in food service, and we continue to see runway to expand our margins from a leverage perspective beyond 2026. Clearly the third element being the continuous improvement in efficiencies. Biotechnology margins are, you know, above 20%+.
Our portfolio will deliver that also as we look forward beyond 2026. Clearly, it's a growing platform, so it's about taking a very balanced approach in terms of continuing to invest and driving the margins. I'm not going to size it specifically at this juncture, but safe to say that it's a topic we'll come back on again, Ed.
Alex in the back row, please.
Thanks. It's Alex Zoner, Barclays. Thanks very much for the day. It was great. Two questions from me. The first one on the food service outperformance, Edmund, you talked about that stepping up to 4% from the historic 3%. That 3% was on a market growth, an end market growth of 2%. Obviously, I think maybe this year the market growth isn't quite 2%, but over the medium term, is that still the right level of end market growth from which you can outperform? That's the first one. The second one, Marguerite, just on the returns point, in terms of asset turns, how do you see asset turns looking out over the next few years?
Obviously, that's been an area where there has been some downward pressure because of the M&A and portfolio change that's been made, but from here, can we expect more stabilized asset turns going forward? Thanks.
In terms of the food service market, I guess we would probably pitch the market at maybe around 1% at the moment, Alex Zoner, in that kind of zone. I think what we're saying is in a 1%, let's say, market, you know, you add 4 to that and you're in the 5 zone. You know, I think, look, our sense of it is as things kind of maybe stabilize here over the next few quarters, on a global basis, you know, we believe we can get back into that 1%-2% zone. And we would for sure be targeting, you know, generally speaking, food service to be in that 6 zone. I think that's kind of how we think about our model.
You know, I mean, quarter to quarter and year-to-year there might be a little bit of volatility, but just generally speaking, that 6% zone is kind of how we think about our long-term algorithm around food service. Based on what we've seen today, we feel we've plenty gas in the tank and plenty of opportunities there, you know, whether it's with the small emerging players, guys that want to scale their business or the majors that want to reposition. Our algorithm is kind of based in that 1%-2% zone as opposed to the 2% zone. We're probably around 1% zone at the moment or maybe a little ahead of that.
Alex, on your question on the asset turns, obviously the asset turns reflect the significant portfolio evolution over the last number of years. Thinking about asset turns and returns together, I guess two sides of the same concept, we have increased our returns to 10.3% in H1, and we're committed to increasing our returns and progressing them within that 10%-12% range, certainly as we go forward and into the medium term, and consequently asset turns also.
Sorry. Excuse me. Charles.
Hi. Yeah, thanks. Charles Eden from UBS. Two questions from me please. Edmond, I think you said this morning that the Americas EBIT margin was already close to or at 20%. I guess that would imply 16%, 6.5% for the rest. If you could just help us understand if that's Europe and Asia both in that ballpark or if one lags. If you could also talk about by channel-
Mm.
Is food service margin accretive or dilutive?
Mm.
That was the first question. Then second one, a bit sort of hypothetical I guess, but obviously ambition for 4%-6% volume growth. You're trending at around 3 in H1, signaled around 3 I guess from, for Q3 given the trading statement this morning. What needs to happen to get
Mm.
back to four? I guess are you prepared to sort of see when you would expect to get back to that sort of medium term algorithm as well? Thank you.
On the last point, first, Charles, I'm not gonna give you an exact date, but I would say sooner rather than later, I would imagine. I think we're on a trajectory here. Let's see what the coming quarters bring. In terms of the margin profile of the business, food service and retail are more or less the same. You know, let's say might be slight, some slight variations, but when we kind of think about it in our heads, it's more or less the same. In terms of, I guess. Look, you know, we focused on the North American market. Sorry. We focused on North America and LatAm, the Americas region.
Like I said this morning, we're already in the zone of 20%, and we see plenty of upside there. You know, Marguerite gave the various, let's say, elements of how we think about margin going forward. I have to admit, the one I'm most excited about is the mix.
Mm.
I think I thought it really came through with the teams today, you know, the integration of the technology into the solutions, the pull-through of technology in every session. That's really important to drive, to continue to drive that margin, as well as the other elements as well. Looking at the other regions, your mathematics is correct. I mean, looking at the APMEA region, the reality is that firstly, we have significantly invested there ahead of the curve. I mean, think back to all the major investments we've talked about in recent years. The vast majority of them have been in the APMEA region.
We've put significant assets in the ground, not just capital assets, but operational assets as well and expenses. That's one point. The second point is, you can, you saw from the LatAm team today very well established team, you know, long track record, long history of time in Kerry. We're probably 10 years ahead in LatAm than we, than we are actually in the APMEA region. That goes to, let's say, the level of technology that we have deployed into the region. It also reflects the level of sophistication of the end markets. I mean, what you saw in LatAm, in terms of that regulatory intervention, that doesn't exist in APMEA yet. The opportunity, we believe, to deploy that technology is in front of us.
We believe it's only a matter of time. The technology is ready to go. We have seen, you know, some, let's say, movement, let's say, on sodium. Definitely the general health and wellness trend is global. It's not gonna take, you know, 5 to 10 years. It's gonna be shorter than that. That kind of gives an indication of kind of how why there is a differential between the regions.
Nicola, you had your hand up there a moment ago. If I can get a mic down the front.
Thanks. It's Nicola Tang from BNP Paribas Exane. Echoing the thanks in terms of hosting us today. The first question was actually similar to Alex's in terms of end market versus outperformance, perhaps you could elaborate on the retail side of the business, you know, where we are today and, you know, the magnitude of outperformance, particularly with respect to what you were saying on the penetration opportunity. The second question, I think you mentioned in the earlier presentations the customer, the dynamics around local and regional customers is, what, very dynamic in the sense that there's a lot of, you know, new players coming through. There's big opportunity for wins, but there's also, I guess, risk of failure or being, you know, partnered with the wrong customers.
Could you talk a little bit about sort of how you screen this to make sure that you're well-positioned with the winners rather than the potential losers?
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
Thank you.
Yeah. Maybe the last part of your question first, Nicola. I mean, Oliver's here somewhere.
Yeah.
He's actually here.
Oh, you're here. Sorry. You know, especially in a region like this where, you know, frankly, everybody has a good idea about launching a new product, you know, we would get approached all the time about, you know, somebody that has a great idea, lots of money, and, you know, they wanna launch a celebrity-endorsed product, let's say. Frankly speaking, somebody like that comes in the door, I mean, we're not super impressed by it. We start asking some hard questions. "Well, do you have listings already?" You know?
If they're not coming to us with listings and with commitments from retailers or Amazon or something, we would be quite cautious about how much resources that we would put on those specific projects. We do a fair bit of homework before we deploy any technology. If we think it's high risk, but we think there might be an opportunity nonetheless, we might service that business through our libraries, so without without the customized products. We would manage that message. We're not gonna You know, every product from Kerry is a special product, but behind the scenes, we wouldn't be customizing products for them. We'd be working from our libraries.
We have, you know, since Marguerite came in, we've established a commercial excellence function, you know, to ensure that we're getting the right return on investment from our commercial investment. You know, we measure every R&D hour invested in every single project we have in Kerry. These R&D resources are our most valuable resources, so we need to make sure we're getting return on every hour spent on a project. This is something that we monitor, frankly, on a daily, weekly, monthly basis.
We have built up a, I would say, a significant bank of data to the point that we have now built predictive models whereby once we, once we feed in a number of attributes of a particular project and a particular opportunity, we can pretty much predict, maybe not at a project-by-project level, but at a global level, how successful that's gonna be and the potential scale of that opportunity. We're pretty confident that, you know, it's not about kind of getting it right 100% of the time. It's about kind of managing it as best as possible that you're getting the right return in your total commercial spend.
In terms of, let's say, the first part of your question with respect to, you know, let's say, market performance and just maybe to shed a little bit of light there by end-use market. I think going through the building today, probably snack and beverage were probably two end-use markets that are quite dynamic. Maybe the headlines, you know, may not look fantastic, but what really that proves is it's the renovation opportunity that's really driving our business.
The private label opportunity as well.
The private label opportunity as well.
I guess we are saying, Oliver, that they would be the probably the two end-use markets that are probably most dynamic.
Without a doubt.
Yeah, without a doubt. Cathal, yeah.
Thank you. Cathal Kenny from Davy. First question is on digital and AI. I think there was a sprinkling of it today. Just be interested to learn where you are on the adoption curve and where you see the most opportunity. Second question, going back to sodium and the opportunity there, it sounds like, you know, you have a significant market position. Just trying to understand what has led to that position relative to sweet, obviously, which is more competitive. The third question is back to margin and the quantum of investment that you've put into food service and emerging markets. Maybe in basis points, is that possible to garner over the last couple of years? Just to understand perhaps the leverage or ease in time as that investment kind of normalizes. Thank you.
I'll kick off on sodium, but maybe Albert, You kick off on sodium because they're probably sick of hearing me.
Yeah, I think over the period, obviously, we've invested a lot in core technology, and I think I expressed it in the some of the biotech area that we've developed unique capabilities. Firstly, we understand this, you know, you need to understand taste receptor metabolism around how sodium is triggered and what it does, and then you need to find the right technology and mine for the right technology in delivering the right solutions. We've done a lot of work and some great work on defining unique peptides that will deliver on sodium, and they come through fermentation, through enzyme modification and so forth. Those unique building blocks then need to be put into a flavor key, and that flavor key then needs to go into, say, for example, here in a snack solution, into a final snack product.
That combination is we can work through, because when you take sodium, you don't only have a salt reduction, you have functionality changes in the application. You have to understand all of those things. Also, as you remove sodium in a product, you get other taste profiles that get expressed more predominantly, and you have to rebalance that profile as well. You, that comes into some of the other modulation technology that plays in conjunction with sodium. We've probably been over the last, I would say, 5 to 7 years building up that technology capability.
As Edmond says, we would definitely feel that we are by far the number one in that space, and by far the most capable company that can offer sodium reduction in the marketplace, and that is reflected by our customers that are engaging with us. They can see this, and they can, you know, they obviously want to work with us in the context of that space.
Maybe I'll take your other two questions, Cathal, maybe on the food service one first. While I'm not going to scale it in actual basis points from a margin perspective, if you think of our taste business, we've dedicated flavorists. If you think of our food service business, you should think of it, we have in the order of over 100 dedicated food service specialists right across the channel. It's a significant investment, very difficult to replicate.
I think importantly, back to one of the points that Edmond said earlier, you know, when you look at the margin of food service versus the rest of the business, we're pretty agnostic between channels. On your second question on digital, the way we think about digital right across the business is really around enabling the business and where we can drive the most value. You're right. You did see a few examples today. I'd probably call out four areas. Firstly, on the product concepting, we've been able to leverage digital, and you'll have seen that being brought to life. Secondly, how we do diagnostics, and you'll have seen that in food protection and preservation.
Thirdly, in Albert's and Mark's earlier session on bioinformatics, on the enzymes and just that high throughput screening of enzymes, that's really leveraging, I guess, you know, cutting edge in terms of digital capability. I think importantly, just in the context of my comments in relation to areas for continuous improvement and continuous opportunity to drive margin expansion, we are leveraging digital, as you'd expect, in processes, in process automation, robotics, et cetera. Look, like everyone, that's an early part of the journey, and we still have road to go. It's very much around digitally enabling the support functions.
I think, Lisa and Alex both had hands up down there. ladies first.
Thank you very much. I have 3, if I may. I mean, you've showcased quite a number of technologies today, and that has been enhanced by some of the M&A you've done over the last 5 years. I mean, where do you see still any sort of potential gaps or places to enhance your portfolio? That's the first question. The second question is the operating environment has seemingly seen quite some changes in the last 3 years by some big consolidations. How has that changed the operating environment for Kerry, and in which ways has this presented some challenges or opportunities? The last one is on free cash flow. We talked about returns, asset return, we talked about margins.
How do you really think about Kerry's structural free cash flow profile in absolute terms, I guess, free cash flow to sales, and how will that change as your margin profile improves over time? Thank you.
Thanks, Lisa. Firstly on M&A and gaps in our portfolio, the reality is we feel pretty good about where we are from a portfolio perspective at the moment. We feel that it is, when we look at our total portfolio, it's a 20% plus margin portfolio. We're pleased with our ability to kind of layer and combine the, let's say, different aspects of our technologies to create incremental benefits for customers. I think you saw that coming through, let's for instance, in the preservation one and both the meat and bakery examples that Peter, Paul and Jennifer brought us through. Sitting here today, we wouldn't be calling out any major gaps. I mean, I think there's probably in the ProActive Health space, it's probably a space we'll continue to be active in.
I would imagine the scale of those acquisitions will be pretty small in nature, but, you know, pretty solid from a scientific foundation standpoint. The second area maybe would be maybe some geographic expansion, maybe some countries, maybe in Latin America, Asia, that we still need to build out footprint. Again, relatively modest from a scale perspective. Frankly speaking, on the operating environment, I think we haven't really seen a huge amount, and I'm talking about that in the context of our customer base. You know, our customer base isn't really kind of saying to us, you know, why aren't we doing what somebody else is doing or anything like that.
I think, what we've seen is that, some of our peers and competitors there that have been going through those transactions have been probably pretty, let's say, inward-looking, I would imagine, because they have a lot of work to do. It's not something that's kind of reflecting itself in the marketplace as, certainly not as a challenge anyway at this moment in time.
Lisa, on cash, I think as I said earlier, we've made very good progress on cash generation and cash flow conversion over the last number of years. As we look forward, you know, good, strong cash conversion is going to be a key driver and a key delivery from us. The changes that we've made structurally in relation to the implementation of our Global Business Services and centralization of, you know, our working capital, AR, AP, through those two centers really gives us an ability to drive efficiencies through our working capital, which, you know, which we've delivered. So look, I would call out firstly our measure is free cash flow conversion. That's how we think about it.
We, you know, we feel good about where we are in terms of, both 2024 in terms of a similar good cash conversion, and then also going forward because we have put the structure in place, to continue to drive efficiencies and cash generation.
Alex Jones, Bank of America. If I could start on the volume growth target of 4% to 6% that you've talked about in the past. You know, today you talked about more outperformance in food service, confidence in a lot of areas in retail. Should we be de-emphasizing the low end of that range in a normalized macro environment, or would you still sort of reiterate that whole range? The second one on Kerry Dairy Ireland, which I don't think is a business we've talked about today. Can you talk about if there's anything evolving sort of strategically in how you're running that business day-to-day, and also on the ownership structure going forward? Thank you.
Thanks, Alex. Just maybe on the second part first, I mean, we run the dairy business quite separately to the rest of the organization. Like we've said in the past, it's not a priority from a capital allocation perspective. We have selectively invested there from time to time, obviously more in the kind of more value-added elements of the portfolio. It is part of our heritage. This is the reality. What we're saying is not any different to what we've said previously in that we continue to be open-minded about, let's say, how to create value there for that, with that business. It is part of our history file.
It is managed quite separately, and we've set it up in such a way that the team there are quite self-sufficient. Of course, there's, you know, normal governance and oversight and things like that. There isn't a, any transactions between taste and nutrition and the dairy business are done very much on an arm's length basis. In terms of 4-6, I mean, how we think about it is we're not aiming at 4 is how I would put it. I think when we, when we think about the 4-6, we're orientating more towards a 5. I mean, we have to be realistic about where the market is. I mean, the market is, you know, flattish or maybe flat to positive in totality.
I think, this question came up earlier today, you know, our level of visibility in food service versus retail, we would have better visibility out in the next couple of years in terms of our pipelines and things like that on food service, rather than retail. That's why you hear us probably a little bit more confident about the food service side over and above retail. I think, I think it's fair to say we're not in a normalized environment on the retail side. Our sense of it is, you know, the market will get back to that kind of 1%-2% volume, or that 1%-2% volume growth like it did in the past.
That would need to happen for us to be in that 5% zone, let's say. I think what we endeavored to show today is that there is a penetration opportunity there, a renovation opportunity there that is not often talked about. We did our best today to try and size that and to show you know, how we think about it and how we feel we're well positioned to take advantage of that renovation opportunity.
We probably have time for just one more question, Patrick. Yeah, if I can get the mic to Patrick, and then I'll hand over to Edmond just to close out.
Thank you. Patrick Higgins from Goodbody. I guess one of the things I've been struck by all day is your confidence in your portfolio to deliver growth going forward and not need to kinda plug that with any new deals or whatever. How should we think about the need for ramping up R&D to maybe unlock some of the value that you have in your portfolio today?
What is it?
R&D. Innovation. Spend on innovation.
R&D.
Oh, R&D spend, is it?
Yeah. Yeah.
Yeah. I, I think, look, when we think about our R&D spend and the scale of our R&D spend as it relates to food and beverage, I think it stacks up with pretty much anybody when we look at it kinda like, from a like to like for like basis. We've acquired a, let's say, a significant level of IP. We continue to build an awful lot of IP within Kerry, and we've only deployed a fraction of the IP that we have within the four walls of Kerry. I mean, the reality is the acquisitions that we've acquired are still relatively young in Kerry's hands. It does take a little bit of time to get your arms around, let's say, new technology within Kerry.
You're talking about once you do that, the next thing is, okay, how can you start combining and synthesizing these technologies together to do more for customers? In areas like ProActive Health, in areas like preservation, obviously in enzymes, we're still at the earlier phases of doing this. Even though we've made a lot of progress in a short amount of time, there continues to be, I would say, significant runway ahead of us to leverage the technology that we have within the four walls of Kerry. I think we feel we have the base technology capability. I think we have a, let's say, a foundation of base taste capability with a foundation of base biotech, and now we can take them in lots of different directions.
I guess when we started out in the biotech journey, I'm not sure we had it all figured out that we could, you know, we could support an enzyme business, a preservation business, a probiotic business, a sodium reduction taste modulation business from that biotech platform. And I think that's been a great journey for us, and at the same time, we think we're only, you know, we're only starting on that journey. Look, with the investment in Leipzig that we called out this morning, I think, you know, you are gonna see us continuing to, I would say to invest more in R&D.
You know, I would say you're gonna see us gradually increase that level of spend, and that's probably something we'll talk to you about maybe, you know, in the next, in the next few quarters. Maybe one point that, Edmond. You talked about digital earlier. Like digital can play a huge role. The R&D investment we have, but using digital to expand that and leverage it more is something that we really believe it can do more for us. We're looking at that as well.
Okay. I think, Edmond, we'll just hand over to your good self in terms of close out.
I don't think I have too much more left to say. Just, look, a huge thank you to everybody for taking the time. I mean, this, we understand this is a huge investment of your time. We greatly appreciate it. We did it the best we could to try and make sure you got value out of your trip here today. Nothing left for me to say except a huge thank you, safe home, and all the best.